A slew of smart gadgets for the high-tech kitchen

Matt Van Horn (left) and Nikhil Bhogal with their June Intelligent Oven (on counter) in San Francisco.

Matt Van Horn (left) and Nikhil Bhogal with their June Intelligent...

It all started with a late-night snack. Or really, if we’re being specific, two Cornish hens.

Feeling hungry during a brainstorming session, tech veterans Matt Van Horn and Nikhil Bhogal decided to tackle a cooking project. When Van Horn’s wife came home to find the two birds roasting in the oven, she was confused.

“She said, ‘What are you guys doing? Aren’t you supposed to be working on your idea?’” recalls Van Horn, who had met Bhogal while working at Path, a social networking-enabled photo-sharing and messenger service similar to Instagram. Now the two were looking to start their own company. Van Horn had worked on the business end; Bhogal, who had previously been at Apple and had his name on a few photo patents, was the engineer.

Neither of them had any experience in the food sphere. But something clicked.

“We looked around the kitchen and said, ‘Why hasn’t this changed in such a long time?’” says Van Horn. The two lamented the fact that the oven was essentially a dark box that left its owner wondering what was happening inside; that stove-top cooking required so much hovering; and that the microwave — though smart in theory — produced such unappealing, soggy food.

That was three years ago. Since then, Van Horn and Bhogal have developed the June Intelligent Oven, a smart countertop device that helps bring the kitchen into the tech age. Alongside them, an industry has moved forward to build the “connected kitchen,” the latest evolution in the world of smart devices.

Connected Kitchen

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Sure, they're all "smart." But are they really? And better yet, are they useful? We check out a selection of connected devices.

Click on each item to judge for yourself.

Anova sous vide machine

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Smart sous vide machine with WIFI, which lets users control the device from another location. Price: $199

Ball Freshtech Jam and Jelly Maker

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Automatic jam and jelly maker. Heats and stirs the jam for you so you can observe through the glass top. Price: $79

Biem Butter Sprayer

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Takes a stick of solid butter and turns it into a liquid for you to spray. Price: $100

Chime

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Like a smart coffee machine but for chai. Allows you to select how you want it and brews accordingly. Price: $399

Picobrew

Smartplate

Somabar

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Robotic bartender that allows you to create mixed drinks. Price: $429

Teforia tea maker

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Automated tea infuser that changes brewing specs based on different types of tea. Price: $1,299

Such developments are no surprise, as the food and tech industries continue to collide at an astounding pace. Silicon Valley experts are putting their technological know-how where their mouths are, confident that home cooks are in need of devices that will do the actual cooking, brewing or infusing for them — or, at the very least, make the process a little easier.

There are WiFi-enabled devices with companion apps that allow you to “cook” remotely. There are Keurig-inspired, highly engineered one-touch appliances — think smart juice presses, tea machines and even a robot-like machine that spits fully cooked tortillas out of its mouth. And there are those devices that will be virtual teachers, like “intelligent” pans and, of course, the June, which recognizes the food put inside and helps the cook carry it to an ideal state of doneness. These new toys are meant to drive people back into the kitchen, offering a technological show alongside the ability to produce something edible.

These new devices, suddenly ubiquitous, make the Jetsons’ Rosie — once a robot extraordinaire — seem downright archaic.

“There are a few trends driving this,” says Michael Wolf, the founder and chief analyst of NextMarket Insight, who advises companies on smart home devices. “There’s an interest to cook more at home, to understand where food is coming from, to get away from processed food,” he says.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

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Cofounder Matt Van Horn makes chocolate chip cookies in the June Intelligent oven in San Francisco, California on wednesday, may 4, 2016.

Cofounder Matt Van Horn makes chocolate chip cookies in the June Intelligent oven in San Francisco, California on wednesday, may 4, 2016.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

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Co-founder Matt Van Horn shows features of the June Intelligent Oven.

Co-founder Matt Van Horn shows features of the June Intelligent Oven.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

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The June Intelligent Oven allows users to manage the cooking process from a smartphone.

The June Intelligent Oven allows users to manage the cooking process from a smartphone.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

A slew of smart gadgets for the high-tech kitchen

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Plus, he explains, the science is becoming more accessible.

“There have been real advancements in censor technology and core cooking technology and software technology,” says Wolf, adding that traditional kitchen appliances are getting a makeover, too. Smart refrigerators, stoves and even slow cookers, which have been around forever, are being remade with new technologies. Wolf says all of these appliances will eventually do more interesting things, like remote shutoff.

Adam Blank, vice president of merchandising at Williams-Sonoma, is seeing more connected devices in the marketplace, and he plans to add to the assortment at his stores. He admits that when selecting products, he’s more inclined to get behind a product if the smart feature adds a benefit to customers’ lives at home — he’s especially fond of the Philips Smart Pasta Maker, which does everything from weighing the ingredients to kneading the dough before producing fresh pasta.

“It’s definitely a game-changer for customers who want to re-create authentic pasta dishes that they typically enjoy at restaurants,” Blank says.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Matt Van Horn makes chocolate-chip cookies in the June Intelligent Oven in S.F.

Matt Van Horn makes chocolate-chip cookies in the June Intelligent...

Many of these smart toys seem beneficial and necessary, while others — like the fork that tells you to slow down or the $150 plate with cameras embedded to recognize and track your food — seem, well, not.

The fastest-growing category in the connected kitchen stems from what one might call the Keurig effect, in which one-touch machines rely on single-use pods to supply any number of beverages (or in the case of the Flatev, tortillas). Keurig pioneered the one-touch machine for coffee as early as 1998; others have followed suit.

It’s what Gaurav Chawla and Samip Bhavsar, two guys with backgrounds in business and tech, are doing with their Chime chai machine; what Allen Han, who also has an engineering background, has done with Teforia, his intelligent tea infuser. There are also personal brewing systems for beer and cocktail machines for aspiring mixologists. It’s endless.

But what happens when cooking — or infusing, or mixing, or brewing — is being done by something that’s not altogether human? Does it take the pleasure out of the cooking process?

Photo: Steven Boyle / The Chronicle

Take the Pantelligent, which, for all intents and purposes, is a perfectly good idea.

It’s a “smart” pan promising to teach its users how to cook, and the operating instructions consist of two simple steps:

One: Download the app on a smartphone.

Two: Cook a piece of salmon.

Pretty simple, given that the app is meant to guide you through the entire process of cooking the fish (or whatever you might want to sear or saute). And that can be helpful, since many home cooks are going in blind when, say, pan-frying a piece of fish, flipping it with fingers crossed and having to cut into the middle — thereby destroying the presentation — to know if it’s cooked to the right point.

Connected Kitchen

To its credit, the Pantelligent produced a perfectly cooked, beautifully bronzed piece of salmon. But I spent about 11 of the 17 minutes adjusting the knob on the stove as a Siri-like voice barked at me that my heat was too high or too low. It was like trying to get rid of the static on an analog radio.

Even if it educates, it also kind of defeats the purpose of making life easier if you’re chained to the stove.

On the other hand, some of these machines are pretty foolproof, and the pleasure is in not having to go through the “process.” But often, as in life, the cooler the machine, the deeper you’ll have to dig into your pockets to actually get one.

Of all the machines I saw or researched, the Juicero was one of the few I’m still coveting. Much as I rolled my eyes at the concept — packets of cut-up produce are popped into a machine and “cold-pressed” until death. Then I actually tried it. The juice is awesome, and there’s zero mess. It was all pretty much juice nirvana, if you’re into that kind of thing.

New smart devices give the kitchen a makeover

Media: agold@sfchronicle.com / San Francisco Chronicle

Juicero founder Doug Evans was, unlike many of his connected kitchen counterparts, a food guy first, so he preaches that the product needs to be the best part of the package. He ran Organic Avenue, a juice bar in New York, for 12 years before deciding that the masses needed industrial-strength juice in an easy format.

“People who have a juicer at home use it 1-2 times a month,” Evans says. “People who have a device like a Nespresso or a Keurig use it 1-2 times a day.”

And the machine is a beaut, a countertop appliance that’s all clean white curves and will blend into any modern kitchen. But it retails for $700, and that’s before you start buying the packets, which sell for $5-$7 each. Evans expects many machines to sell first in offices and retail outlets — which is the same story for devices like the tea-infusing Teforia — but still, the price instantly puts the machine out of the reach of most individuals.

Some founders have recognized that cost — in addition to the finished product — is also key to finding an audience.

Stephen Svajian is the co-founder and CEO of Anova, a smart sous vide device that cooks food submerged in a water bath and retails for $200. That price tag seems relatively affordable compared to other sous vide machines, some of which can creep up to quadruple digits (and aren’t even as “smart”). It’s allowed Svajian — who has been working with this type of device in the chemistry field for decades — to bring it to the masses, while educating new consumers.

“Prior to our launch, people had the conception that sous vide was for chefs and foodies,” Svajian says. But by lowering the price and using technology as a teaching tool, it’s become more mainstream and given cooks more confidence in the kitchen, he says.

And having that assurance, Van Horn would argue, is really what it’s all about.

“We’re definitely not doing this just to create a gadget,” he says, explaining that his mission with the June is to change the way people think about food and cooking. “For us, it’s ‘How do we lure people into the kitchen for the first time, or back into the kitchen, so they feel like they can be confident to make dinner on a busy Wednesday, whether they know how to cook or not.”

Right now, the June recognizes about 25 foods, but like many of these devices, it will continue to get “smarter” as more people use it for different purposes. Home cooks can, with the help of an embedded touchscreen in its glass facade, do everything from roast vegetables and sear fish to broil meat and bake cookies.